Thomas
Thomas 'is a blue tank engine. He came to Sodor in 1915, which was probably the same year he was built, as a station pilot at Vicarstown until 1924-5, at which time he was transferred to Wellsworth following an incident with some trucks. Later that year, after rescuing James from his crash, he was given charge of the Knapford-Ffarquhar branch line and two coaches named Annie and Clarabel. Bio According to The Adventure Begins, Thomas arrived on Sodor some time after James. Initially, he was painted teal and numbered 70. He was brought to Sodor to shunt coaches for the Main Line engines, such as Henry and Gordon. The first engine he befriended on Sodor was Edward. He liked to play tricks on Gordon, the biggest and proudest engine on the railway. He was taught a lesson when Gordon tricked him into being coupled to him during his express run. Tired out, he vowed never to tease Gordon again, realising he did not have to do so to be important. Soon, he desired to pull his own passenger train too, much to the bemusement of the other engines. He got his chance when Henry became ill, and no one could pull the passenger train. However, Thomas was so excited that he accidentally left his train and his passengers behind, believing he was pulling it easily. He soon realised his mistake and returned to pull the train. The engines laughed at him, though, and soon Thomas wanted to get out of the shunting yards and see the world. Edwardoffered him a chance to pull trucks, and Thomas excitedly took the job, not realising how troublesome trucks could be. The trucks pushed him down Gordon's Hill into a siding, where the Fat Controller told him to practice so that one day he would become as good as Edward. Thomas soon proved himself to the other engines when he saved James from a crash. James was pulling a train of trucks who were pushing him too fast, and when he tried to stop his brake blocks caught fire. Thomas chased after him and tried to couple to the back of the train to slow James down, but he failed and James and his trucks derailed. After fetching Jerome and Judy, who lifted him back onto the tracks, he was given James' coaches, Annie and Clarabel, and his own branch line, which had previously been run by Glynn the "coffee pot". He still has the occasional annoyance with wearing his snowplough during wintertime, but always learns his lesson afterwards, such as in the seventeenth season, when he hid it on a siding so he could stay in the shed, but when Emily took Annie and Clarabel out, he tried to go find it and got stuck in the snow, leading to Emily rescuing him and earning another stern reprimand from The Fat Controller. He once had an accident at Brendam Docks, but instead of owning up to it, he blamed it on a made up engine called Geoffrey, which made everyone curious about who Geoffrey was. He hid in Henry's tunnel and pretended to be Geoffrey in order to trick the Fat Controller, but after Spencer nearly ran into him, Thomas was caught out and apologised. He was also chosen to be the first engine to be inspected by two railway inspectors. After their journey, a gold watch belonging to one of the inspectors was found inside Annie, and Thomas gave it back to him. Later, he became covered in spots after Butch sprayed him with mud by accident, which made Henry think Thomas had chicken pox. When the Sodor United Football Team was playing the Barrow's Red Team, he and James tried to compete to see which color was the best only to end up getting into trouble with the Fat Controller. In Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, Thomas once again began to get conceited, believing his branch line to be the most important. But after an accident with Gordon's express coaches, he was sent to help with the construction of theHarwick Branch Line as punishment. But he was still being boastful, and accidentally fell into a deep cavern, where he found a pirate ship. Once he returned after having his wheels mended, he found Sailor John and Skiff wandering around the hole he fell into, and befriended them. However he later discovered that Sailor John was only looking for the treasure that Marion had found, claiming it as his own. When John stole the treasure from Knapford, he tried to escape on Skiff while Thomas gave chase. Despite receiving help from Mike, Rex, Bert and Ryan, Thomas couldn't catch them, and John and Skiff made it back to sea with the treasure. However Skiff capsized due to the rough water, and John was arrested. Thomas was later fully repaired and was given the honor of cutting the ribbon, opening the Arlesburgh-Harwick line and leading Duck, Rocky, Oliver, Toad, Ryan, Daisy, Donald and Douglas down the line. Persona Thomas is a rather cheeky, but good hearted engine and generally behaves well, except when he is getting into mishap. He loves teasing the others and, on occasion, brags about his superiority, but is always brought down to earth in due course. If Thomas has one major character flaw, it is that he is forgetful, and slightly impatient. However, he is also optimistic and idealistic. Although their friendship has been turbulent at times, Percy is generally portrayed as Thomas' best friend, especially in the television series. Basis Thomas is based on the Billington E2-Class 0-6-0T locomotives built for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway between 1913 and 1916. He is apparently one of the last batch built as only these engines featured his distinctive extended side-tanks, projecting forward over the leading wheels and little down sweeps at each end of the footplate. The E2s were introduced in 1915 to replace earlier members of the E1 class, which had been scrapped. The last five in the ten strong class had extended side tanks to give a greater water capacity, but all engines had two inside cylinders and driving wheels 4'6" in diameter. After many years of service, all of the Billington E2s, both original and modified, spent their last working years at Southampton Docks and they were all scrapped by 1963, the very last pair being numbers 31204 and 31209, the latter being amongst the last batch. There is, however, a campaign with the aim to build a new E2, and number it 110. Thomas has a slight modification of having wheel splashers over his front wheels whereas the original E2s did not. Livery Thomas is painted in the North Western Railway's standard blue livery with red-and-yellow lining and the number "1" painted on his tank sides in yellow with a red border. In the Railway Series, he carries two builder's plates on the sides of his cab. When Thomas first arrived on Sodor in The Adventure Begins, he was painted teal-green with white lining. He had LBSC lettering painted on his tanks in yellow with a red border and had the number "70" painted in the same colours on the sides of his bunker. Upon his first visit to the Steamworks for a repaint, his metal frame devoid of paint is seen before being applied with a pink undercoat to keep water out from him, which would cause permanent rust damage. In the first three seasons of the television series, Thomas had red lining on the back of his bunker. However, during the filming of All at Sea, the lining was removed for unknown reasons. Sam Wilkinson, the current railway consultant was responsible for bringing back the red lining on Thomas' coal bunker as of The Adventure Begins, and it will carry through into future seasons and specials. Too Much Thomas? While he may seem innocent enough, poor Thomas created a fair bit of trouble for Christopher Awdry and Egmont Books, publishers of the Railway Series, when the latter started asking for more books about the happy little tank engine. Granted, Thomas was the most popular character in the original Railway Series books, but Egmont went too far and thus the problem continues. With the advent of the television series, Egmont started asking for more Thomas and to this day Thomas has eight Railway Series volumes under his undercarriage. Two of the titles actually have very little to do with Thomas - Thomas Comes Home focuses on the adventures of the branch line engines during Thomas' visit to York, while Thomas and the Fat Controller's Engines only featured one story about Thomas, although he did appear in two of the other three stories. As a result of Thomas' fame, classic characters like Oliver and Bear have become largely neglected. Thomas and the Toddler When the Reverend W. Awdry created Thomas, he existed only as a wooden toy made for his son, Christopher. This engine looked rather different from the character in the books and television series, and was based on an LNER J50 or a Hudswell Clarke with smaller side tanks and splashers. He was painted teal-green with yellow lining, and carried the number 1 on his bunker on both sides in yellow and also carried the letters "NW" on his side tanks in yellow. Awdry claimed that this stood for "'N'o '''W'here", but later works would identify the railway Thomas and his friends worked on as the North Western Railway. Oh, the Payne For the illustrations of Thomas the Tank Engine, Edmund Ward, then-publisher of the Railway Series, hired illustratorReginald Payne, who decided to base Thomas on the LB&SCR E2 Class. (Awdry was annoyed that Thomas was obviously not the tank engine he had first drawn, but he was satisfied when Payne explained that he was drawn after a real prototype). Unfortunately, Payne did not receive any credit for his work; it is only since the publication of Brian Sibley's The Thomas the Tank Engine Man that he has received recognition. Running Plate Thomas's running-plate was allegedly a source of some contention to the Reverend W. Awdry during the course of the Railway Series. As originally drawn, it had a distinctive dip at the front, but none at the back. The story goes that to Awdry's eyes, this meant that Thomas' buffers would be at different levels, an operational inaccuracy and impossibility. This seems curious on Awdry's part, as all the artists had drawn Thomas as having an extra-deep rear bufferbeam to compensate, thus putting the front and rear buffers at the same level. Be it a matter of taste or inaccuracy, the issue of the running-plate had to be settled: thus Thomas' excursion into the Stationmaster's house at Ffarquhar was arranged. After his repairs at Crovan's Gate, Thomas returned with a new running plate that was flat and level from smokebox to bunker. The E2's on which Thomas was based had dipped running-plates at both front and rear and the Hornby Thomas model displays these features, having been retooled from a set of moulds formerly used by Hornby to make E2 models. His television counterpart, however, retains the unique forward-dipped running plate. Thomas on the Big Screen In 2000, Thomas made it to cinemas in the box-office flop Thomas and the Magic Railroad, in which he was voiced byEdward Glen. He was the only engine from the television series to play a major role in the story, and even left Sodor briefly. Despite the film's overall failure, Thomas kept on puffing and later featured in straight-to-video features Calling All Engines!, The Great Discovery, Hero of the Rails, Misty Island Rescue, Day of the Diesels, Blue Mountain Mystery, King of the Railway, Tale of the Brave, and The Adventure Begins. Soon Thomas reached the big screen yet again in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure. It has been revealed that there is an upcoming theatrical film to take place in London during World War II. In April 2013,Josh Klausner stated that he does not know if the movie is still going ahead. Thomas in Popular Culture The Nene Valley Railway at Peterborough, England, was the first railway in the world to possess a full-scale replica "Thomas", an industrial tank engine built by Hudswell Clarke so nicknamed for its blue livery and resemblance to the famous tank engine. In 1971 the name was made official by the Reverend W. Awdry. Other tank engines the world over have since been dressed up as Thomas. Some railways have even gone so far as to rebuild locomotives to produce a better replica. Unfortunately this has created a divide between preservationists: some claim it disfigures historic locomotives and trivializes the preservation movement, others say it attracts visitors and can potentially spark an interest in railways amongst young children. A "real Thomas" (built for The All Aboard Live Tour) was used in a special play staged to celebrate the eightieth birthday ofQueen Elizabeth II, starring beloved characters from children's literature. In the play, Thomas was used to convey Sophie Dahl, the granddaughter of the late Roald Dahl, to centre stage, and was greeted by thunderous applause and cheers from the audience of two thousand children and their parents. Another "Real Thomas" is used during "A Day Out With Thomas" events where people actually ride in his passenger coaches and get their pictures taken with Sir Topham Hatt. Additional attractions include petting zoos, pony rides, story telling, viewing of "Thomas and Friends" videos, temporary tattoos and a gift shop. There are stage performances called Thomas the Tank Engine Live, where people get to see Thomas and his friends perform on stage. Three different plays have been made - "Thomas Saves the Day", "A Circus Comes to Town", and "Thomas and the Hidden Treasure". Thomas has also been known to be seen in amusement parks. In America, Thomas was usually found in "Six Flags" parks until 2010 when the licence was not renewed. In Drusilla's Zoo Park near Alfriston, Sussex, England, a special attraction was opened where Thomas carried passengers through the zoo; it also featured James, Diesel, Cranky, and the Fat Controller. At the United Kingdom's Drayton Manor theme park, a special place called "Thomas Land" is dedicated to fans to ride on multiple rides based on Thomas and Friends. The park opened on March 15th, 2008. One of Thomas' models used in the television series is on display there in the "Discover Thomas and Friends" exhibition. Another park opened at the Edaville Railroad in Carver, Massachusetts in the summer of 2015, adopting a phase similar to Drayton Manor. Thomas Land in Japan was the world's first Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends theme park. It opened in 1998, and located at the Fuji-Q Highland, an amusement park in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan. Like the UK's Thomas Land, it has multiple rides based on the series. A few of the rides, displays, play house areas, and exhibits try to recreate scenes from the television series. Another one of Thomas' models from the television series is on display there. Thomas and Henry window stickers have been shown to make various appearances in the hospital drama Children's Ward, which aired on ITV (which also aired Thomas and Friends and the classic series). Thomas' Bachmann HO model (along with HO models of Annie, Clarabel, and Emily's coaches) makes an appearance in the 2015 Marvel movie, Ant-Man. His large scale Bachmann model is also used in some scenes, although the model's face is different. Thomas also appeared as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 2014. He also appeared in the Toronto Santa Claus parade alongside Rosie and Percy on November 15th, 2015. Thomas was recently mentioned on Disney XD's Lab Rats vs Mighty Med crossover special. Appearances * Season 12 - Thomas and the Billboard, Steady Eddie, Mountain Marvel (mentioned), Henry Gets It Wrong(does not speak), Heave Ho Thomas!, Toby's Special Surprise, Excellent Emily, The Party Surprise (does not speak), Saved You!, Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon, James Works it Out, Tram Trouble, Don't Go Back, The Man in the Hills, Thomas Puts the Breaks On, Percy and the Bandstand, Push Me, Pull You, and Best Friends * Season 13 - Creaky Cranky, The Lion of Sodor, Tickled Pink, Double Trouble, Slippy Sodor, The Early Bird,Play Time, Thomas and the Pigs, Time For a Story, Percy's Parcel, Toby's New Whistle, A Blooming Mess,Thomas and the Runaway Kite, Steamy Sodor, Splish, Splash, Splosh!, The Biggest Present of All, Snow Tracks, Henry's Good Deeds, Buzzy Bees, and Hiro Helps Out * Season 14 - Thomas' Tall Friend, James in the Dark, Pingy Pongy Pick Up, Charlie and Eddie, Toby and the Whistling Woods, Henry's Health and Safety, Diesel's Special Delivery, Pop Goes Thomas, Victor Says Yes,Thomas in Charge, Being Percy, Merry Winter Wish, Thomas and the Snowman Party, Thomas' Crazy Day,Jumping Jobi Wood!, Thomas and Scruff, O the Indignity, Jitters and Japes, Merry Misty Island, and Henry's Magic Box * Season 15 - Gordon and Ferdinand, Toby and Bash, Emily and Dash, Percy's New Friends, Edward the Hero,James to the Rescue, Happy Hiro, Up, Up and Away!, Henry's Happy Coal, Let it Snow, Surprise, Surprise,Spencer the Grand, Stop that Bus!, Stuck on You, Big Belle, Kevin the Steamie, Wonky Whistle, Percy the Snowman, Tree Trouble, and Fiery Flynn * Season 16 - Race to the Rescue, Ol' Wheezy Wobbles, Express Coming Through, Percy and the Monster of Brendam (cameo), Ho Ho Snowman, Flash Bang Wallop!, Thomas and the Rubbish Train, Thomas Toots the Crows, Bust My Buffers!, Percy and the Calliope (cameo), Thomas and the Sounds of Sodor, Salty's Surprise,Sodor Surprise Day, Emily's Winter Party Special, Muddy Matters, Whiff's Wish (does not speak), Welcome Stafford, Don't Bother Victor!, Happy Birthday Sir!, and The Christmas Tree Express * Season 17 - Kevin's Cranky Friend, Scruff's Makeover, Wayward Winston, Gordon Runs Dry, Calm Down Caitlin, Steamie Stafford, Henry's Hero, Not Now, Charlie!, The Lost Puff, The Thomas Way, The Phantom Express, Percy's Lucky Day, Bill or Ben?, Too Many Fire Engines, No Snow for Thomas, Santa's Little Engine,The Missing Christmas Decorations, The Frozen Turntable, Away From the Sea, Gone Fishing, The Afternoon Tea Express (does not speak), The Smelly Kipper, No More Mr. Nice Engine, and Thomas' Shortcut * Season 18 - Old Reliable Edward, Not So Slow Coaches, Flatbeds of Fear, Disappearing Diesels, Signals Crossed, Toad's Adventure, Duck and the Slip Coaches, Thomas the Quarry Engine, Thomas and the Emergency Cable, Marion and the Pipe, Missing Gator, Spencer's VIP, Toad's Bright Idea (cameo), Long Lost Friend, Last Train for Christmas, Duncan the Humbug, The Perfect Gift, Emily Saves the World, Timothy and the Rainbow Truck, Marion and the Dinosaurs, Samson at Your Service, and Millie and the Volcano * Season 19 - Who's Geoffrey?, The Truth About Toby, Lost Property, Henry Spots Trouble, A Cranky Christmas,Snow Place Like Home, The Beast of Sodor, Toad and the Whale, Wild Water Rescue, Very Important Sheep,Salty All at Sea, Den and Dart, Helping Hiro, Diesel's Ghostly Christmas, Reds vs. Blues, Slow Stephen, Two Wheels Good, Best Engine Ever, The Little Engine Who Raced Ahead, Philip to the Rescue, No Help At All, and Thomas and the Baby Specials: * Hero of the Rails * Misty Island Rescue * Day of the Diesels * Blue Mountain Mystery * King of the Railway * Tale of the Brave * The Adventure Begins * Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure * The Great Race Voice Actors * Ben Small (UK; Hero of the Rails - eighteenth season) * John Hasler (UK; The Adventure Begins onwards) * Martin Sherman (US; Hero of the Rails - eighteenth season) * Joseph May (US; The Adventure Begins onwards) Trivia * In the Railway Series, Thomas was the first engine to have a number on the NWR. However, in The Adventure Begins, there were five other numbered engines before he was made number 1 to replace Glynn, a "Coffee Pot" engine from Sodor's branch lines. * Four Thomas models are currently on display: one at Drayton Manor in the UK, one in Japan at the Hara Railway Museum (previously on display at Nitrogen Studios), the large scale Thomas model used in the spin-off series, The Pack, in Japan at Thomas Land, and one for the touring Thomas and Friends: Explore the Rails exhibit, currently at the Minnesota Children's Museum. * Thomas appeared in BBC's Children in Need charity single. He was voiced by Ringo Starr. * Christopher Awdry lost the original Thomas model when he was in the US, although it was recently recreated for a sizzle promo for the 70th Anniversary. * In Day of the Diesels, it was revealed that Thomas' driver is named Bob. * Thomas was the first character introduced in the television series, unlike the Railway Series. * As the series progressed, Thomas' eyebrows became larger and thicker. * In Jack and the Sodor Construction Co., Thomas' running plate on his left side has a hole. His face masks were modified after the sixth season. * Throughout the twelfth season, Thomas' chassis was open, revealing the mechanisms on the model. * Thomas went through several changes in the television series: ** Season 2: *** He gained a smaller brake pipe. ** Season 3: *** His footsteps got smaller. *** After Trust Thomas, the lining on the back of his bunker disappeared. ** Hero of the Rails: *** His pistons and valve gear become visible. The Adventure Begins: * The lining on the back of his bunker returned. * His side-rods become silver. Gallery ThomasintheSeason12opening.png ThomasAndTheBillboard8.png ThomasAndTheBillboard93.png SteadyEddie11.png TheManInTheHills34 (1).png HeroOfTheRails2.png|Thomas in full CGI Category:Steam locomotives Category:Tank Engines Category:0-6-0 Category:Thomas' Branch Line Category:North Western Railway